Conheça os instrutores

Antoine Flahault

Professor of Public Health and Director of the Institute of Global Health (Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva) and co-Director of Centre Virchow-Villermé (Université Paris Descartes)University of Geneva and Université Paris Descartes – Sorbonne Paris Cité

Rafael Ruiz De Castañeda

Institute of Global Health - Faculty of MedicineUniversity of Geneva

Defeating Ebola Together "General Introduction to the MOOC"

I am delighted, as well as proud,

that Switzerland is able to contribute to this course, this MOOC,

and, in particular, that our university, the University of Geneva, is playing an important role.

It's satisfying to me because I feel that our country should contribute

to the way in which healthcare

-- and other broader societal issues --

are managed in today's globalized world.

In addition to the University of Geneva, other Swiss academic

institutions have participated in the creation of this MOOC,

including the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,

also located in Geneva, and the University of Basel.

This symbolizes, I feel, the way in which Swiss universities and academic

institutions can come together to make a contribution.

This project brings together several Swiss academic institutions, then,

but also -- just as importantly --

several very diverse disciplines by which to approach the issues connected with

major health crises such as Ebola. The medical and health-related

aspects must obviously be addressed, but so too must

other dimensions, such as those pertaining to

economics, sociology, and other disciplines.

This seems to reflect a very important change in how

scientific disciplines are collaborating

and working together to

address not only public health issues, but

more broadly, the major issues of society as a whole.

It seems to me, in this respect, that we are seeing an evolution in how

universities and academic institutions carry out their missions, away from the "silo" approach and

towards an increasing development of interdisciplinary and interfaculty approaches.

I'd also like to mention that, here at the University of Geneva and its Faculty

of Medicine, in order to better tackle these new challenges,

we created an Institute of Global Health just last year.

The role of the Institute of Global Health is to partner with other faculties within the University to address international public

health issues, not only from a biomedical standpoint,

but from each and every relevant standpoint.

This is emblematic, I believe, of how the future of our academic institutions is going to take shape

-- in any event, that's how I see the University of Geneva's future.

One last point worth noting:

Geneva is a very unique city in that it is home to a large number of

international institutions, governmental and non-governmental organizations.

This not only affords us a wealth of very interesting opportunities for

collaboration, but also imposes a duty to

establish partnerships between these organizations and the academic world.

I hope that this MOOC on Ebola will give a clear signal

concerning how public health, in all its facets, should be addressed.

>> Dear viewers of our MOOC, "Defeating Ebola Together,"

welcome back to Geneva and to the Biotech campus.

I'm standing in front of a world map that illustrates the

magnitude of the challenge we are facing with Ebola.

>> What has the crisis in West Africa taught us so far,

as relates to healthcare systems?

One thing we already knew is that

that healthcare systems of all three countries concerned are very weak,

and entirely nonexistent in some respects.

We knew that the information systems did not work;

we knew that the medication supply chain was

fragmentary at best; and we knew

-- this is crucial to how the Ebola crisis has unfolded --

that the number of healthcare workers was extremely low.

So when Ebola struck the local populations,

the stage was already set, so to speak,

for the healthcare system to fail dramatically in its response.

Why was this the case? Had no investments been made in these areas?

>> Ebola is a tragedy.

A tragedy of massive proportions.

To deal with large-scale public health crises, you

need large-scale information systems. Well, this MOOC,

(Massive Open Online Course)

is one way to help close the information gap

by bringing high-quality, university level information to those who

need it most, who need it for the purposes of prevention,

organization and crisis management.

Some of the objectives of this MOOC on Ebola

are to create a tool that is as accessible as possible,

to spread crucial information about this public health problem,

and to educate the diverse groups of people who are called to

confront this problem, be they healthcare professionals,

healthcare system administrators, elected officials or other decision-makers.

What we need now -- which, thankfully, we possess --

are massive digital information systems that allow for an effective

response by spreading the information as broadly as possible, throughout the world,

in the French-speaking world as well as

other areas of the world.

We need tools like MOOCs.

This project is brought to you by several of the

entities responding to the crisis, such as the

World Health Organization, the French Ministries of Health

and Higher Education, the University of Geneva and

the Online Francophone University for Health and Sport Sciences (unf3s.org) a French-language digital university.

All of these entities have come together to create this MOOC,

under the leadership of our friend and colleague Professor Antoine Flahault,

leading expert in the field of epidemiology and public health,

who will guide you through the weekly sessions that make up the

five weeks of our course.

You'll have the opportunity to acquire high-quality, university level knowledge.

Yet we've tried to make the information and knowledge as accessible and

easily understandable as possible for all.

We thank you for your viewership

and we hope this course will provide all the information necessary to achieve